There are many different merchants offering many different types of goods. In some cases, such merchants may want to sell their products with other merchants, because different products from different merchants may be complementary. Each merchant may increase sales if they sell their products with other merchants offering complementary products. For example, one merchant may sell gifts while another merchant may sell gift wrapping services. The merchant selling gifts may not provide gift wrapping, but may sell more gifts if some gift wrapping is offered at the time of purchase. This is because buying a gift and having it gift wrapped in one transaction is more convenient for a consumer. For a similar reason, the merchant selling gift wrapping services will sell more gift wrapping services if gifts are offered at the same time.
Some aggregators such as Amazon® offer products for multiple merchants so that a user may purchase different products from different merchants at one time. In this case, the aggregator collects the total payment for all of the products ordered by the user. The aggregator then takes a percentage of the total payment as a fee, and then pays the merchants from the balance.
There are a number of problems with this type of system. First, this type of system requires the aggregator to maintain a significant payments and accounting infrastructure to collect, and distribute funds. Because of this, very few entities can perform this function. Small merchants may therefore have limited choices for selling their products with other merchants. That is, if a small merchant wants to sell its products with other merchants that might offer complementary products, then both merchants must work with a limited number of transaction aggregators.
Further, when a consumer buys multiple items from different merchants, the consumer may only want to purchase the multiple items only if all items can be obtained. If, for example, a consumer wants to buy a table from one merchant and a vase from another merchant, the consumer may only want both products if the consumer can have both products. If one product cannot be obtained, then there is no way for the consumer to prevent the order from occurring.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other problems, individually and collectively.